Page 17 of Make Me, Break Me

“Come in,” I murmured, tugging at her arm with my good hand, walking backwards as Nelson opened the door when I kicked at it with my heel. “Stay with me.”

“No.” Zin glared at first me, then at my housemate. “Enough favors for one night. Go deal with your new charge, nursemaid,” she shot at Nelson, turning away.

I laced the fingers of my good hand through hers. Not that I could feel the other one in its cast right now. “What if I need you tonight?” I asked, lowering my voice, though Nelson wouldn’t missanythingbeing right damn well there in our space, the royal little creeper.

“Then you’ll have to take care of it yourself. With your other hand,” she said tartly to Nelson’s general hilarity. “Maybe think of that if you’re going to pick a fight with the biggest bully on campus. Have you been fighting, too?” Her dark gaze snapped to my roommate.

Nelson took a step back, freeing the doorway up. I took the opportunity, retreating into my dorm room, and brought Zin with me.

“I don’t have anything to do with this.” Nelson raised his hands in my periphery, but couldn’t stop the wince his action brought on.

A decent dose of guilt swirled in my stomach. “He’s not involved.” I doubled down on his declaration of innocence.

I mean, he was, but only because of me. And…cue the extra guilt. No amount of painkillers stopped that. Damnit.

Zin snorted. “Right.” She tugged her hand free, and I couldn't stop her. Nothing worked properly, including my feet. “Go to bed, Dex. I’ll be back to feed you in the morning. Look after him,” she said softly to Nelson over my head as I found myselfsitting on the floor. “And don’t let him pick fights with Beau Bennett, for fuck’s sake?”

Nelson laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”

Zin leaned down into my field of vision and cupped my cheeks in her smooth, small hands. “Go to sleep, Dex. Rest. I’ll—” She sighed. “I’ll be here tomorrow.”

I gave her a goofy grin. “I knew you couldn’t resist me,” I murmured, losing myself in her pretty eyes.

Right before I passed out on her biker boots and drooled across their scuffed surface.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ZINZI

I perched on the edge of Dex’s sofa for the second week in a row, no more comfortable in his friend’s space than I had been on my first day there, and pretended to smile. Nelson flicked at his bow tie and scrolled on his phone, while Falcon made out with his new girlfriend and returned the same assessing glance I’d been giving him for the last weeks.

None of us had made ground in the last fourteen days while Dex did the same thing he’d done the whole time I’d been in visiting mode.

He slept.

Finally, the silence of the room and Dex’s snores, not that they weren’t cute, exactly, I just had nothing to do while he snoozed with his head on my lap, ate at me.

“Okay,” I said too loudly for the cramped space filled with five of us, standing up. Thankfully, the boys let me keep my boots on. Dex’s head dropped back to the sofa, his snores continuing unhindered. “I don’t think I can do much more here.” My fingers twitched at my sides. I held them still with effort.

“Your company helps.” Nelson offered me a small smile, toying with his bowtie and his phone at once.

That was quite a skill considering that the only other garment he wore was a towel that didn't quite disguise the long, pink scar that crept up from his midsection. There was a story in that, and I wanted to pry, but kept my mouth shut.

Falcon withdrew from kissing his girlfriend who seemed at least as shy as me and hid in his shoulder. The mafia prince, from all accounts, wasn’t. He studied me baldly, his brand of silence both confident and unnerving.

“I don’t really think I'm doing anything.” I gestured to the sleeping Dex, who cuddled into the side of the couch.

“He doesn’t sleep when you’re not here,” Nelson added softly, pausing in his bowtie torture.

“And he drinks all my whiskey.” Falcon grimaced, breaking his silence to speak up for the first time in a day.

But the death knell came from the man I’d left snoozing on the sofa.

“Stay.” Dex cracked one eye open and held out his injured hand which was, in fact, broken.

Everything with him was on a six to eight week repair schedule, minimum, and we were two weeks in. Nelson typed up his assignments as Dex dictated off the top of his head, both working at a speed that blew me away. Falcon knocked around business negotiations and tactics that taught everyone in the room more than we ever needed to know about legal loopholes. That, at least, seemed to keep Dex’s mind active and stopped him from being self-destructive.

And me…

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